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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Heritage Guide To The Constitution, Second Edition: What Has Changed Over The Past Decade, And What Lies Ahead?, David Forte, Edwin Meese Iii, Matthew Spalding
The Heritage Guide To The Constitution, Second Edition: What Has Changed Over The Past Decade, And What Lies Ahead?, David Forte, Edwin Meese Iii, Matthew Spalding
Law Faculty Articles and Essays
The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, first released in 2005, brought together more than 100 of the nation’s best legal experts to provide line-by-line examination of each clause of the Constitution and its contemporary meaning—the first such comprehensive commentary to appear in many decades. The Heritage Guide to the Constitution: Fully Revised Second Edition takes into account a decade of Supreme Court decisions and legal scholarship on such issues as gun rights, religious freedom, campaign finance, civil rights, and health care reform. The Founders’ guiding principles remain unchanged, yet a number of Supreme Court decisions over the past decade …
The Long-Term Implications Of Gonzaga V. Doe, Bradford Mank
The Long-Term Implications Of Gonzaga V. Doe, Bradford Mank
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
State and local governments are often responsible for disbursing federal medical, educational, and welfare benefits. What happens when they deny or revoke them unfairly? Some recipients have used 42 U.S.C. § 1983 as a way to enforce the underlying statutes. The Supreme Court decision in Gonzaga University v. Doe, 536 U.S. 273 (2002), made this more difficult. In doing so, the Court adopted stringent rules for the use of § 1983 to enforce any federal laws, including the nation’s civil rights laws.
Unmistakably Clear: Human Rights, The Right To Representation, And Remedial Voting Rights Of People Of Color, Matthew H. Charity
Unmistakably Clear: Human Rights, The Right To Representation, And Remedial Voting Rights Of People Of Color, Matthew H. Charity
Faculty Scholarship
The Author critiques the Supreme Court’s analysis in its Shelby County v. Holder decision, which found the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional by applying a disparate treatment analysis to how States were treated under the Act. Such a reading of the Act makes a number of tacit and explicit assumptions with regard to the choice by the Federal Government and by the States of whose rights governmental actors must protect. The Court reached its conclusion by decontextualizing the Civil Rights movement and the Voting Rights Act from decolonization and post-World War II expressions of human rights, a …
Toward A Fundamental Right To Evade Law? Protecting The Rule Of Unequal Racial And Economic Power In Shelby County And State Farm, Martha T. Mccluskey
Toward A Fundamental Right To Evade Law? Protecting The Rule Of Unequal Racial And Economic Power In Shelby County And State Farm, Martha T. Mccluskey
Journal Articles
To rationalize its ruling on voting rights, Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder develops a constitutional vision of passivity in the face of institutionalized power to violate the law. This essay compares Shelby County to State Farm Mutual Automobile v. Campbell, a 2003 Supreme Court ruling involving a different subject area, state punitive damage awards. In both, the Court asserts newly articulated judicial power to override other branches, not to protect human rights, but rather to expand institutionalized immunity from those rights. On the surface, the Court’s rejection of state sovereignty in State Farm (protecting multistate corporations from high punitive damages) …
Race, Federalism, And Voting Rights, Guy-Uriel E. Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer
Race, Federalism, And Voting Rights, Guy-Uriel E. Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer
Faculty Scholarship
In Shelby County v. Holder, the Court struck down an important provision of the Voting Rights Act, section 4, on federalism grounds. The Court argued that Congress no longer had the power to enact section 4 because of the “federalism costs” imposed by the Act and because the Act violated "basic principles" of federalism. Unfortunately, the Court failed to articulate the costs to federalism imposed by the Act, much less conduct a cost-benefit analysis in order to determine whether the benefits of the Act outweighed its costs. Moreover, the Court failed to discuss whether the Reconstruction Amendments ought to matter …
Bait And Switch: Why United States V. Morrison Is Wrong About Section Five, Kermit Roosevelt Iii
Bait And Switch: Why United States V. Morrison Is Wrong About Section Five, Kermit Roosevelt Iii
All Faculty Scholarship
As the title suggests, the article examines Morrison’s creation of the rule that the Section Five power cannot be used to regulate private individuals. This is one of the most meaningful and, thus far, durable constraints that the Court has placed on federal power. It is the more surprising, then, that it turns out to be based on essentially nothing at all. The Morrison Court asserted that its rule was derived by—indeed, “controlled by”—precedent, but a closer reading of the Reconstruction-era decisions it cites shows that this is simply not the case. An independent evaluation of the rule against regulation …
"Fuck Your Breath": Black Men And Youth, State Violence, And Human Rights In The 21st Century, Jeremy I. Levitt
"Fuck Your Breath": Black Men And Youth, State Violence, And Human Rights In The 21st Century, Jeremy I. Levitt
Journal Publications
This polemical essay was written at the behest of Black men and youth, and it is dedicated to African American women who relentlessly fight to safeguard the rights and well-being of Black men, even when in the process their maltreatment and welfare are grossly overlooked and forgotten. Bree Newsome's courageous and necessary removal of the confederate flag in the South Carolina State House is a prime example of such fearless activism. Joanne Deborah Chesimard aka Assata Shakur's-a former leader of the revolutionary organization known as the Black Liberation Armyascendency to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist list is another tragically intoxicating …